London - Event

English National Opera's music director Edward Gardner conducts a new double bill at the London Coliseum. Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle, with Michaela Martens and Clive Bayley, joins Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring, performed by Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre.

Duke Bluebeard's Castle - Bartók's only opera (1918) - is a brooding tale of oppression. Bluebeard brings his new wife Judith home to his dark castle. She forces him to reveal all his castle's secrets hidden behind seven doors, with tragic consequences. Michaela Martens sings Judith and Clive Bayley sings Bluebeard in Daniel Kramer's new production.

Ireland's Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, directed by choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan brings dance to the Coliseum stage for the second half with Stravinsky's iconoclastic and influential ballet The Rite of Spring (1913). Pagan rituals are enacted as spring breaks winter's grip on the world, and the elders' choose a sacrificial victim to thank the gods for signs of returning growth.